My last post was about a new bill that wants to profoundly change the Brazilian Copyright Act (to the worse, in my view). However, I found that a less ambitious – but still very troubling – bill was introduced last December 13th by Congressman Luciano Castro of the Republic Party of the State of Roraima (Northern Region of Brazil) which aims to limit the term of assignment of rights in copyright-related contracts. The bill received number 2910/2011 and, on January 31st, 2012, it was sent to the Committees of (i) Education and Culture, (ii) Constitution and Justice and (iii) Citizenry for approval. If approved, the bill will continue its path through Congress.
Currently, the Copyright Act does not provide for any limitation on the term of assignments and licenses. Section 49 of the Act determines that assignment can only take place in writing and that a total, unrestricted transfer is possible, with the obvious exceptions of the moral rights of the authors. The same Section further determines that, in the absence of a written contractual provision, the maximum term of the assignment will be deemed to be of 5 years. Continue reading
